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11.29.2017

Missed this year’s Fantastic Arcade? Bring the festival home to you with six amazing and exclusive games, presented by Austin’s independent game collective & Venus Patrol sister organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS!

The collective has brought together six of the most talented indie developers from around the world to create new games, all of which made their debut at the eighth-annual indie game festival, Fantastic Arcade, which took place in Austin, TX, November 17th through 19th, 2017.

Thanks to distribution partner itch.io, all proceeds from the sale of this bundle benefit the non-profit organization. Help JUEGOS RANCHEROS showcase more amazing games both here in Austin and a city near you, and commission more fantastic developers to create new games like these!

Included in this bundle are all six games you see here! Here is what you’ll get:

PIPSQUEAK, by Jenny Jiao Hsia

Pipsqueak has only one purpose in life: to eat all the eggs he can find. Help Pipsqueak traverse through unseasoned terrain and vanquish any and all who get in his way. (Windows, Mac)

ROTOR, by Connor Mccann

The base is breached! Navigate malfunctioning drones through the defense grid to discover the secrets of an invading anomaly. ROTOR is an abstract arcade game featuring an original soundtrack by Asthmatic Kitty recording artist Chris Schlarb. (Windows, Mac)

FORGET-ME-NOT, by Brandon Williamson

Mazes and monsters and mushrooms and flowers and witches and potions and eyeballs and tombstones and turners and dashers and grinders and slimers, and bombs, and bombs, and bombs. Plagued with the curse of autofire, you roam the corridors of Forget-Me-Not forever, in search of a cure for your beloved… (Windows, Linux) (Mac version is forthcoming & will be available to all who purchased the bundle when it is available!)

12.30.2016

For the second year, my old stomping grounds Boing Boing has published my Venus Patrol 20 list — the twenty games that sang to me the most throughout 2016, which you can get a load of right over here. (You can also find 2014′s edition over here.)

As usual, the list doesn’t include a number of multi-million-dollar marketed games that are no less deserving of recognition, but which probably didn’t sneak past your radar this year, as well as four games that for one reason or another I just couldn’t get to this year that I’ll be visiting with soon, all of which you can see above.

The list was also part of a live reading at Austin’s Nerd Nite in mid-December, video of which will be online soon — thanks both to Nerd Nite & Boing Boing for supporting the list. Hope you enjoy it, and please look forward to more actual Venus Patrol happenings in 2017!

9.23.2016

Want to bring this year’s Fantastic Arcade home to you? We’ve got the perfect way! Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS has just launched a bundle of five amazing and exclusive games making their debut at the seventh-annual indie game festival, Fantastic Arcade.

Thanks to distribution partner itch.io, all proceeds from the sale of this bundle benefit JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our non-profit organization. Help us showcase more amazing games both here in Austin and a city near you, and commission more fantastic developers to create new games like these!

Included in this bundle are all five games you see here, along with extras & bonus materials! Here is what you’ll get:

NIUM, by Moppin & Nemk

DOWNWELL creator Moppin has partnered with Nemk (one of our favorite artists working in games) to present NIUM: a post-apocalyptic action game where players will crawl through a ruined, abandoned, STALKER-esque exclusion zone inhabited only by a variety of mutated wildlife. (Windows, Mac)

INSPECTOR WOOF, by Klondike

From Klondike — France’s upstart super-collective of indie game stars — INSPECTOR WOOF & THE VEGETABLE HIGH SCHOOL is a procedurally generated mystery adventure game where every student is hiding terrible secrets. Armed only with your freshly-printed hints sheet, dig deep into their guilty consciences and expose the truth! (Windows, Mac, Linux)

F2OGGY, by Nathalie Lawhead

F2OGGY (Only one survives!) is a Brute-Force Frog-Combat Simulator, by the IGF-winning creator Nathalie Lawhead, made for a growing audience of competitive frogfans. Each player is divided into a faction (a Frog-Faction), and must defeat their opponent using High-Velocity Amphibian Impact Lunges. (Windows, Mac)

LASSOS, by SOKPOP

From SOKPOP — the the Dutch collective behind indie cult classics like the low-fi sci-fi exploration game BERNBAND — comes LASSOS, a game fit for its Texas debut: throw lassos, get money! (Windows, Mac)

7.6.2015

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

4.28.2015

Missed our GDC party and have been kicking yourself ever since? If you’re in the NYC area, you’re in luck: Venus Patrol is partnering with local DIY videogame space Babycastles to bring you an all-day, all-ages event on May 9th, featuring Qrion — the Sapporo-based producer who became an actual honest viral sensation on Vine based on her Venus Patrol/Wild Rumpus party appearance in March.

To celebrate that success, we’re bringing her back for another show — which has since expanded into her first ever full U.S. tour — where she’ll be supported by Anamanaguchi’s Peter Berkman (who also gave an incredible performance at our party), and, super excitingly, NYC’s Doss, another local favorite who you can preview below.

In addition to the night of music, Babycastles will be open all afternoon for a separate all-ages & family friendly exhibition of games, including three perennial favorites:

Donating to the campaign even just with a measly dollar, gets you a downloadable copy of her Venus Patrol/Wild Rumpus party set (which you can stream here). Higher donations will net you even more unreleased music downloads, as well as (at the highest level) a specially-curated assortment of snacks from Japan, which I can personally vouch for, having been on the receiving end of said snack-delivery in March.

The Venus Patrol x Babycastles show will be held May 9th, 2015, at 137 West 14th St, New York. We’ll have more information about the show in the coming weeks, including more games and special guests that will be included in the lineup of day-time events, as well as ticketing options (which will be available at the door the day of the event) — I hope you can make it out and look forward to seeing you there!

4.6.2015

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

3.18.2015

Love the likes of X-COM, Oregon Trail and roadtrips across a ruined American landscape? Then join us Wednesday, April 1st, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents the local debut of Overland, the forthcoming tactical survival game from Austin’s own Finji.

Just back from a critically acclaimed first showing at San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference, Finji will be giving Austin an early opportunity to play the game, in which “players scavenge fuel and other supplies as they head directly into the heart of a cataclysm” which has produced “a hardly-recognizable America.”

As part of the event, members of the development team — which include Austin locals Adam Saltsman, Shay Pierce & Jocelyn Reyes, in addition to LA’s Heather Penn — will give a short presentation on both the influences & design goals of the game, in advance of its desktop/tablet release later this year.

Overland will be playable Wednesday, April 1st, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public, so come join us as we drink, play and meet the people changing the way we think about games!

12.17.2014

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

While they’re still remaining tight-lipped on the actual gameplay, Funomena says Wattam — a combination of the Tamil and Japanese words for “making a loop” — provides a hint to what the game will be about, “making connections between different types of things.”

Above is the first trailer for the game just revealed at the PlayStation Experience event, which introduces Wattam‘s main-character mayor, with more details expected to trickle out throughout 2015, all of which you’ll obviously probably be seeing here.

11.7.2014

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.